YEAR OF ULYSSES M VP By Stefan Krecsy and the Modernist Versions Project Team 2014 CC-BY TABLE OF CONTENTS I-III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII the centerpiece for the YoU, this tweets – the actual archive, as well Introduction retrospective affords pride of place as the visualization thereof, leaves I But who are all those people, to the sixteen twitter chats that much to be desired as a reading CHAL- dropped into the text by not these digitial publications inspired. copy. LENGEYOU much more than their names, During these chats, Joyceans of TO MAKE rapidly sketched features, ges- all stripes took to twitter to debate INSTANT tures, appearances and fragmen- and discuss the finer (and, at times, tary reactions? rougher) points of each episode; in SENSE OF THIS the hopes of celebrating as well as continuing the dialogue of YoU, these twitter chats are here pre- sented, with some editorial over- Does this relentlessly paran- Celebrating the 90th birthday sight, for your reading pleasure. tactical listing aggregate into of James Joyce’s Ulysses and its Prior to a brief discussion on anything with a claim to being incumbent Canadian emancipa- the necessity of this editorial understood as a narrative. In tion from copyright, the Year of engagement, I would like to thank #YoU Twitter Viz. Click to Enlarge. their sequence, the terse state- Ulysses (YoU) brought Joyce’s Dr. Jentery Sayer’s for his work in Warning: Bandwith Required ments appear as randomly masterpiece to the greatest possi- setting up an active twitter archive. In editing the roughly thirteen collocated nucleai of narrative ble readership through a series of But for him, no such editorial work thousand tweets archived within without compelling inherent, let web seminars, twitter chats, and, would be possible, as the record of the YoU chats for presentation, I alone connectively causal rela- centrally, the digital publication of these chats would otherwise have wanted to avoid overwhelming the tion, they fail to become narrative a first edition Shakespeare & Co. been inaccessible (inaccessible, reader with material, while also because they are denied explicate Ulysses. Though the serial release though perhaps not lost, thanks to affording a sense of the com- contextualizable locally, nor can of the 1922 text, made possible the vigilance of the NSA) due to plexity of Twitter as a medium. the unprepared reader muster through the efforts of Patrick Belk Twitter’s limited archival record. Occasioanly, it seems as though implicit meaning from a wider and Mathew Kochis at the Univer- However, in recording the Twitter is entirely a centrifugal reading memory, or from a social -Hans Walter Gabler, sity of Tulsa and with the support entirety of the Twitter Chat – a medium, demanding multiplicity or topographical memory? “The Segments and the Whole” of the McFarlin Library, served as yield of some thirteen thousand rather than coherence, cacophony 1 2 rather than unity; in either case, a strange elision occurring where hopes of making the reading expe- a fourteen character hashtag of Ulysses, and of good conver- while both impulses were readily commentaries on Ulysses itself rience somewhat more inviting. becomes something of a burden. I sation, should find all this is as it apparent throughout the YoU morphed into commentaries on As an interactive PDF, all URL’s have also removed the handles of should be. twitter chats, it was not nearly so Twitter and vice versa. Throughout within the text are hyperlinked and the tweets from the corresponding obvious how best to represent the chats, participants raised the will lead to their corresponding participants, as my hope here was -Stefan Krecsy these impulses on paper. While troubling intricacies of discussing websites. Similarly, the episode to foreground the dialogue rather YoU Lead Researcher & Editor the above visualization provides Ulysses on Twitter, while others headers are linked to their corre- than the participants themselves. an effective way conceptualize the highlighted the similarity between sponding PDF copy of the digiti- Though issues of design, space, discussion as a whole, the sheer the two, at first so dissimilar, texts. lazed 1922 Ulysses. Furthermore, and method motivated my deci- number of connections and digres- With these elisions in mind, though I have worked to increase sion to do so, I also assumed that sions can be nothing short of over- Gabler’s challenge resonated with the legibility and accessibility of the in a medium where everything is whelming. Though the data thus my own experience with YoU, twitter archive, I have left unedited so thuroughly public, the partic- presented affords a good sense of and motivated me to attempt a any errors and shorthand that ipants would not bemoan some the size of engagement that YoU sort of synthesis between Twit- might be found therein. small privacy. That being said, an inspired, it does not necessarily ter and some of the technics of Finally, faced with an unwieldy enterprising reader could recon- facilitate a desire to engage , far less Ulysses, and “Wandering Rocks” mass of tweets, I was forced to struct the conversations based on read, such material. in particular. I have written about exclude a great many of them, and the tweeter handles being replied In casting about for how best this approach in more detail at the as such, this should not stand in to, and to make this enterprise eas- to represent the complexity of a Maker Lab and MVP’s websites, as a conclusive catalogue of the ier, I have listed the participants in year-long twitter conversation, and but in brief, recognizing that twitter entirety of the YoU tiwtter chats, the appendix. Furthermore, if the while reviewing the YoU lectures chats are always plural, I have much less the project as a whole. spirit so moves a reader to discover , I was struck by Hans-Walter attempted to represent what I take A great many retweets have been the source of a particular tweet, Gabler’s challenge “to make to be the relentless and centrifu- removed for the sake of brevity, let me refer you once more to the instant sense” of the “relentlessly gal pressure of the twitter archive and the same basic concern twitter archive as expressed within parantactical listing” of “Wan- using the labyrinthine form of motivated my decision to excise the visualisation. dering Rocks.” In reviewing the “Wandering Rocks” as a model. the YearofUlysses’s hashtags – as Despite these revisions, I trust apparently undifferentied bolus of With that being said, I should many participants themselves that the chats remain messy, tweets, I had already recognized provide a few textual notes in the complained throughout the chats, ambiguous, and incomplete. Fans 3 4 5 6 sKOK #ulysses @uvic think about the novel! 22 June 2012 ─ Overview of the Telemachiad ─ With images of pages, digital TELEMACHIAD (5-ish min); half-hour each Telemachus, reproduction seems to emphasize the 12:00 - 14:00 Proteus, Nestor, w/breaks in between for physicality of the book, esp with type open Q& ;A. Ready? bleeding thru pgs ─ Thx all . Can we start by thinking a ─@EKSwitaj I think the note abt # of Moderated By bit abt digital context? Do U get anything signed copies, etc. speaks to physicality different, ideas abt book as artifact? too. Who bought, for how much. cf. L janineutell ─ Seems that’s something @mvp1922 Rainey. contributes to our study of the book, and ─ Broader than just , but the HTML/ a place to start. PDF question is actually rather vexing; ─ Frontmatter, publication informa- latter has many advantages… but is way ─ TODAY at 2pmEST! Here’s tion, book history. less portable. some inspiration: Wordles for the ─ First decision: html or pdf? I had to ─ Also note: no chapter headings, no Telemachiad. http://t.co/xgUbOPHZ // choose PDF. numbered chapters, no Homeric clues, any interesting prompts? #fb ─ less possession of the text; feels at a just the “I” at the start. ─ In case you missed it, here’s a great distance but typography becomes more ─@janineutell Yes, and to the book, piece on from @readywriting: http://t. pronounced. the text, and literature as a commodity co/B2mAaUqJ #ulysses @uvic ─@janineutell This is the first time (or a set of commodities?). ─@GhostProf ICYMI: Made some I’ve seen SB’s wonderful note, asking ─@cforster Yes re: HTML/PDF. wordles; posted this a.m.: http://t.co/ “the reader’s indulgence of typographical Tools w/diff uses. broader but @mvp1922 xgUbOPHZ errors” will raise more convo abt this I think. ─ in an hour: “bringing this novel ─ it’s definitely nice to see a first edi- ─@janineutell @EKSwitaj Just read of the everyday back into everyday life.” tion and not have to use the white gloves. that chapter from Rainey. The ‘limited 2pm EST. Love Sylvia Beach’s apology. edition’ vs. private edition def. stands out ─ 5 minutes to YoUr first chat. A ─@jrparks321 Went w/PDF myself. to me. huge thank you to @janineutell for mod- ─@cforster Yes, esp since the errors ─@EKSwitaj Exactly. Who is it for. #yearofulysses erating. More here: http://t.co/swON- have actually contributed a lot to how we (And why does Beach feel like she has to 7 8 apologize anyway? To whom?) the profane on the first page. ─ I might also tag @notthemiddle- haunted, yes? RT @EKSwitaj: Could His letter. Speaking in memory. ─ Interesting: Telemachus begins ─ Check out the reader’s copy-edit- ─@mchlstvns Enjoyed Mulligan man to offer thoughts on haunting, if we we also connect the Black Mass to the ─@notthemiddleman Would that with the “black mass”/parody, ends with ing on page 31 if we’re talking materiality.